Rankin was a minor character in DEXTERand one of Dexter's few kills that doesn't fit the code. He meets Dexter in Season 5 Episode 1 "My Bad" at a rundown waterside store...and meets his end in a bathroom.

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Rankin is shown to be a tall man with a long, scraggly beard and thick auburn hair. He has a wide, sloping forehead and fashions his hair in the shape of a mullet. For clothes, he wears a long-sleeved, grey and darker grey striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a torn, bluejean vest on top of it. He also wears tightfitting jeans and boots. He appears to be in his mid-30's.

Rankin was also shown to be surprisingly physically strong in his fight with Dexter-even though Dexter is a martial artist who has proven himself capable of taking down foes even larger than himself in hand-to-hand combat and shifting dead weight around after knocking people out, Rankin was able to grab hold of him even as he lunged at him in a rage, stopping his forward momentum completely and shoving him backwards against a wall. However, he could not defend himself after being stunned by Dexter's headbutt.

In his limited interaction with Dexter, Rankin is shown to be a bad-tempered, foul-mouthed, obnoxious, rude man with little-to-no patience and a short fuse. When Dexter first encounters him, he angrily sifts through the store to get the key to the bathroom and when he spots Dexter, he takes offense to the way Dexter is staring at him and angrily calls him a retard. After Dexter follows him into the bathroom, Rankin realizes he is about to retaliate, and angrily asks him what his problem is. Even after Dexter appears to have a weapon ready to attack him, Rankin, seemingly angered by the mistaken belief that Dexter is lying to him about losing his wife in order to earn his sympathy, continues to be aggressive with verbal attacks.

As Dexter prepares to leave everything behind and start anew, he takes a stop off at a local station to refill the fuel for his boat. He stops in the nearby store for supplies and finds Rankin angrily calling out for an attendant. When nobody arrives, Rankin goes behind the counter and searches around until he finds the key to the bathroom. As he turns around and spots Dexter he takes offense to the way Dexter is staring at him and calls him a retard before moving past him to the restroom. Dexter, feeling that he should let it go at first, eventually follows.

Dexter enters the bathroom behind Rankin and grabs the small anchor used as a theft-deterrent for the bathroom key. Rankin sees him do this and shouts at him as he realizes Dexter is about to retaliate after he called him a retard. Verbally defending himself and refusing to be intimidated, Rankin angrily asks Dexter what his problem is, and Dexter tries to earn his sympathy by telling him that his wife had died that week and it was his fault. But Rankin, not caring about Dexter's grief, rudely responds by saying "Well, I'm real sorry for your fucking loss, but your dead wife can suck my dick." This causes Dexter to uncharacteristically attack him, lunging at him with the anchor, and while Rankin is able to defend himself at first, grabbing Dexter's anchor arm and shoving him against the wall, Dexter surprise attacks him with a headbutt and shoves him through the wooden cubicle and to the ground before bludegoning him to death with the anchor. Dexter immediately breaks down after and screams. As he backs away from Rankin's body, Dexter has a moment of internal dialogue with Harry (as he has been seen in Season 3 and 4) who tells Dexter that was the first human thing he has done since Rita's death.

Nothing is known of Rankin's background so Dexter killing him violated "the code." Unlike previous times where Dexter has broken the code, however, Dexter shows no sign of remorse for killing him. Multiple times Harry references the incident to Dexter thereafter, but it is only mentioned as a "problem" with him dealing with the loss of Rita rather than anything against the code...Dexter never bothered to learn who he was, what he did or any of the sort...but considering the body was never found, Dexter probably did some quick cleanup to get rid of the corpse.